Chapter 27 - The Descent

"Lydz! Lydz!"

Freddie's voice jerked Lydia out of a dozing half-consciousness.

Lydia sat up in her sleeping bag. "What the heck, Freddie?!"

"I couldn't sleep and I was playing with it and it started doing something it's never done before!" he scrambled to say.

Christie spluttered with laughter.

Shona was indignant. "Freddie!"

"Oh! Stop it, you lot. You're so bad!" Freddie protested.

It did not surprise Lydia that she could see him clearly. Her enhanced senses meant that darkness no longer veiled her sight. What surprised her was when she noticed his face was lit by flickering colours. The lights came from something cupped in Freddie's hands.

"What have you…" she said.

Freddie held out his hands. Cradled in them was the mandala Ambrose had given him as a present. It was in the shape of a globe and seemed bigger than before. The coloured beads on its silver strands were sparkling. Within the globe, she could see something surrounded by a haze of light.

"What is it?" Shona asked.

The image became clear. Lydia could see that inside the globe of the mandala, there was a ball of crystals, each clinging to its neighbour.

"I think it's a sign," Freddie whispered. "I think it's telling us somewhere we need to go or something we have to find. It's Ambrose, he's helped us in secret!"

"Freddie, can you go back to the boy's tent and bring Oddy and Dev to meet me in the headquarters?" Lydia said. "We need to work out what this means."

"Shall we come with you, Lydz?" Shona asked.

"You guys stay here. Try to get some more sleep. I think we're going to need it. Once we've got an idea what's going on, we'll discuss it as a team, hopefully over breakfast."

The girls settled back down in their sleeping bags. Sophie gave her a little wave. Lydia pulled a jumper over the rest of her clothes and stepped out of the tent.

Freddie was emerging from the boy's tent, followed by Oddy and Dev. Jimmy stuck his head out of the tent and looked blearily at Lydia.

"Can I help at all, boss?"

She smiled. "Just get some sleep, Jimmy. We need somebody to be sharp in the morning."

He gave her the thumbs up and slipped back inside the tent.

Lydia and the three boys went into the headquarters tent, Freddie holding the door flap open for the others. Lydia motioned towards the camp chairs at the table and held her hand out to Freddie for the mandala. As he let it drop into her hand, the light inside faded.

Lydia handed the orb back to him. "It's for you alone, Fredster. You're the special one."

The orb glowed again as it touched Freddie's hand. He explained again what had happened with the mandala and showed the two boys the image inside.

"It's a geode," Dev said. "A collection of crystals which have formed together."

"That must be the first token," Oddy said, "an emblem of the Earth Essence. I imagine it's hidden underground."

"And we've just found a cavern," Lydia noted. "Funny, that."

"I imagine," Oddy said, "or rather, I surmise from things he has told me, that Ambrose is guiding us."

"The mandala was magic, after all!" Freddie enthused. "How come you didn't know, Lydz?"

"Ambrose has a bit of experience, you know?" Oddy said. "He had to hide its magic from the Alterworlders, if it's here to help us. If any of us had known about it, they might have detected that knowledge and stopped us bringing it with us. Ambrose hid its magic even from Lydia."

Freddie frowned. "But, how does it help us find this crystally thing? Underground is a big place, and there are probably lots of rocks like this."

"Lydia, try touching the mandala while Freddie is still holding it," Dev suggested.

Lydia looked at Oddy, who gave her an encouraging nod. She reached out and rested her hand on the glowing orb.

"Can you sense anything, Lydia?" Dev asked.

Lydia reached out to the orb with her mind, the way she had reached out to the cage in which she had imprisoned Alorea Rakissen. The mandala did not resist her approach. It seemed to welcome her inside. As she caressed the image of the geode with her mind, she felt something pulling at her heart. From the direction of the pull, towards the cave and downwards, and from some ineffable knowledge, she knew it connected her to the geode, the token.

"Yes," she answered Dev. "I think we'll be able to find the token. Did Ambrose tell you anything about what we have to do with these tokens when we find them, Oddy?"

"He did. But he's Ambrose. Just because he told me things, and I discussed them with Dev, doesn't mean we fully understand them."

"What do you understand, Oddy?" she asked.

"The tokens, once we have them all, can be assembled to create something which represents the Anteworld. This allows us to close the connection with the Alterworld, stopping the Alterworlders from reaching our world."

"Then we all go home and live happily ever after?" asked Lydia.

"At least until the next time the Alterworld makes an attempt," Dev said. "And, of course, only the survivors get to go home."

Lydia sighed. "And Ambrose said every team loses someone."

"No," Freddie contradicted. "Ambrose said that every team so far has lost someone. We'll just have to be the first team that doesn't!"

"Ambrose said we are the youngest team ever," Oddy added. "That gives us a unique advantage."

Lydia stared at him and smiled. "Are you being optimistic, Oddy? We really do live in strange times."

"It's not optimism. I'm extrapolating from the fact that we have the best leader ever."

At breakfast, Lydia and the three boys told the others about the geode. Afterwards, they packed their equipment. The magic inherent in their rucksacks did most of the arduous work of organising and folding away everything they put inside. They waited for everyone to return from their morning ablutions in the woods, then gathered outside the cave. Dean led them in.

The cave entrance led into a broad room of stone. Green and yellow lichens grew on the rough walls where the daylight penetrated the shade. Dean gestured further in and to the left. Lydia drew a flashlight from her bag and shone it in the direction he had pointed. There was a gap at the back of the cave, a tunnel into the hill.

Dean beckoned to the others. "This way to the cavern."

Lydia grinned. The cave was lighter now as the others took out their lamps. Dean seemed as excited as a small child, eager to show them what he had found. She followed him into the tunnel.

"It gets a bit tight further on," he said, climbing over a fallen rock.

"Dean, I'm about the size of one of your arms," Lydia pointed out. "If you and Jimmy can get through, I don't think the rest of us will have a problem."

"Good point well made," Dean conceded.

"It defies logic how someone so intelligent can make such simple mistakes," Oddy said.

"People have different priorities. They focus on different things," came Shona's voice from behind them. "Even the cleverest people can make mistakes or overlook things. There's the whole absent-minded professor thing, for instance."

"So, you're saying Dean's focus on pies makes him lose sight of the practicalities of caving?" Jimmy asked.

They could hear Jimmy's grin in his voice.

"Can we all just please focus on getting through this tunnel for now?" Lydia called out. "We don't need any injuries."

The tunnel carried on for some way, sloping downwards. Some shivered. The air was cooler than in the cave entrance and felt damp. The bottom of the tunnel was narrow for their feet, which they had to place one in front of the other as if on a tightrope. Pebbles crunched as they stepped. They clattered as they shifted and rolled under the passing feet, their sounds exaggerated by the hard cave walls.

Lydia saw Dean was having to turn sideways and squeeze through several narrow areas. Behind, she could see Oddy, Sophie and Freddie were, like her, having no such problems. Further than that, she could not see because of the shape of the tunnel. She knew Jimmy was as big as Dean in some ways. She appreciated their efforts in exploring the tunnel the previous day. The sudden realisation of the lengths her friends were going to gave her a pang of guilt.

"Here we are," Dean said, as the tunnel widened.

Following him, Lydia found they were in a small chamber. A pool of blackness occupied the centre of its floor. Dean warned the others to enter the chamber with care: the blackness was the hole which dropped into the cavern below. The others shuffled into the chamber, pressing themselves back against its walls. Lydia and Dean sank to their knees and approached the hole. Oddy shuffled in close to Lydia, and they all looked down into the darkness.

"Hang on," Dean whispered, focusing his electric torch and shining it into the void.

Lydia could see the cavern floor, perhaps twenty metres or more below them. As the boys had described, bones, large and small, littered the cavern floor.

"How do we get down without magic?" Dean asked.

"Ever heard of ropes, Dean?" Oddy chipped in.

"Has anybody got rope?" Dean called out.

"We all have, Dean," Oddy said. "Don't forget Lydia packed our bags before she let us add our own things."

"Pitons, hammer, carabiners, fifty metres of climbing rope," Lydia instructed her rucksack.

Between them, they rigged up a rope through two carabiners connected to pitons hammered into cracks in the rock wall. Lydia tied two loops at one end of the rope to make a simple harness and placed her legs through them.

"Hang on, Lydz. I'm the heaviest. I'll go first," Dean said.

She handed him the double-looped end of the rope.

"Put your legs through the loops and pull them up so that you're sitting in it. Hold on to the rope with your hands and we'll lower you down with the other end. Once you're out at the bottom, we'll pull the rope back up and let the next person down."

"What happens with the last person?" Shona asked.

"When half of us are down in the cavern, we can hold the free end of the rope down there to lower the others down one at a time," Lydia explained. "That's the reason for having twice the length of rope. Once we're all down, we can pull the free end through the carabiners and take it with us."

"I'll come last," Jimmy volunteered.

"Thanks, Jimmy," Lydia said. "For now, you can give us a hand lowering this… cargo into the cavern."

"Cargo?!" Dean protested. "If it wasn't for me, we wouldn't have found this cavern."

"Except I was the one who found the cave, mate," Jimmy reminded him.

"I found the tunnel."

"You weren't right keen on checking it out, though."

"Yeah, only cos I thought we should get back and tell the others."

"Do you need me to go first and look after you?" Sophie smirked.

Dean scowled, handed the free end of the rope to Jimmy, and sat down on the edge of the hole.

"I'm not having my courage besmirched by you… besmirchers," he pronounced.

"C'mon, fellow besmirchers," said Jimmy. "I'm gonna need a hand wi' t' cargo."

Laughing and joking, they lowered Dean into the cavern. He held onto the rope with one hand and used the other to shine his torch around the underground space. Freddie, who was watching Dean's descent to warn of any problems, described what he saw.

"There's, like, a gigantic pile of rocks and bones in the middle and it slopes down all around that. I can only see one bit of wall and it's got milky-looking rocks running down it. The spiky things — futons, was it? — haven't moved a millimetre. So that's good. Oh, he's down! He's waving. I guess he's OK."

"Thanks, Freddie," said Lydia. "And they're pitons, not futons. Sophie, you were desperate to look after Dean. You can go next."

They pulled up the harness end of the rope and lowered Sophie. The others followed one-by-one. When six were inside the cavern and only Lydia, Christie, Corben and Jimmy were in the tunnel above, they dropped the free end of the rope down to the others. The team below, led by Dean, took the strain of lowering the remaining few.

Lydia went next, followed by Christie. Corben clambered into the harness loops.

"I can't say I'm delighted about hanging by my nethers," Corben admitted to Jimmy.

"You'll live," Jimmy assured him. "Everyone else has managed. Or is there summat special about Slytherin nethers?"

"Well…" Corben grinned, then blushed.

Jimmy grinned back. "Do your best to keep them safe. Off you go, Corben."

Corben sat on the edge of the hole. Those below took up the slack in the rope and Corben waved to Jimmy.

As Corben slipped into the pool of darkness, Jimmy heard a crunch and saw the rope jerk. He dived to grab the rope that was holding Corben, but the second piton crunched and pinged from its crack in the rock. The rope disappeared from sight.

"Shit!" Jimmy screamed.

Lying flat on the tunnel floor now, Jimmy shuffled until he could see into the cavern. People were shouting and whooping, their calls echoing up to him.

"He's all right, Jimmy," Dean called up from the cavern floor. "Sophie did the thing with her broom again."

Jimmy sat up and laughed with relief. Then something occurred to him.

"Hang on!" he called down to the others. "How am I supposed to get down?"

He could hear muttered discussions taking place, then Dean called up to him again.

"How are you at plummeting, mate?"

"Like a stone, Dean. Apart from the squishy ending, that is."

"Yeah, bloody amateur," Dean shouted back. "We'll send our professional rescuer up to get you. You'll have to climb down through the hole until you can hop onto Sophie's broom."

"Hop?!" Jimmy shouted.

"You might have to land on your nethers, Jimmy," Corben called up to him. "Good luck with that!"

"Be more concerned about Sophie's broom, mate. I'd hate to break it," Jimmy joked.

There was laughter and chattering from below. Sophie's voice cut through, close by.

"The rock's like a chimney for a couple of metres, then it opens out into the cavern," she said. "You'll have to climb down with your legs apart then drop onto the broom. I think the broom will survive. Just try not to fall off while you're squealing in agony."

"You're bloody loving this, aren't you?"

Jimmy climbed down the chimney of rock, arms and feet against its walls. Sophie lay flat on her broom and raised it as close to Jimmy's feet as possible. Bracing his forearms against the rock, Jimmy felt for the broom with his feet.

"Come on, Jimmy," Sophie said. "It's painful pressed up to the rock like this."

"It's no bloody picnic hanging over an abyss by me elbows trying to land on a stick wi' me nethers!" Jimmy said.

Jimmy got his feet on the broom and crouched down, steadying himself with his hands against the rock above his head.

"Now, what?" he asked. "I'm half on and half off. I'd prefer to be all on."

"I'll drop the broom and pull it backwards," she said. "It'll make you fall forwards onto my back. Just grab on to me and I'll do the rest."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, of course," she said. "It's as easy as juggling eels on the back of a one-legged horse."

"Oh, bugger it. On the count of three, then."

Jimmy was still shaking as Sophie deposited him on the pile of rocks where the others were waiting for them.